they might steal The Son Because The Priest is bunting

I hope one day they’ll raise the draft age and I can die somewhere outside Tehran, as a conscientious objector, subjected to helping the wounded of the current administration's policies, which is why I believe life is already carved out for you when you’re born. I will not die in Iran, though I wish to, and though I will do what I can to make that happen, I will continue to live in Southern California, in a beautiful house with a garden, and the weather that suits my tan. Sometimes I have 10 dollars, and sometimes I have 7,000, and I have never felt or seen a difference in my own complexion. However, I am more willing to give money to other people when I have 7,000 dollars. I’ve handed out bits of paper with Abraham Lincoln’s portrait on it to various criminals, drug addicts, and the unfortunate (The Catholic Church). Though I am an adult on this planet, I still seek refuge, or comfort, and I have found it in two places during my 37 years: the pews of a church and a seat in Wrigley Field, as long as no one talks to me. Sitting behind home plate is like sailing across an ocean without any of the work. There is wind from the water, and no one expects you to do anything.

I once sat behind home plate, beside the person who clocks the speed of the ball leaving the pitcher's hand. He had a clipboard and wrote down the speeds with a blue pen. He looked like an asshole: White hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a Cubs shirt. You could smell it on him. I think it's called Brute deodorant and comes in a green cylinder. He had a serious look on his face, which reminded me of what can happen if you marry someone you hate. This was all within one minute of our time, and the rest of the minutes I got to hear the crack off the bat when a player hits a ball. The lights turn on, and the field turns into stained glass after everyone leaves. No one asks you to leave when a ballgame is over. Everyone is gone.

If you don’t listen to what they're saying, Church is a marvelous place to be as well. The ceremony, the detail in the stained glass, and other pieces of artwork, including the crucifixion that usually hangs behind the pedophile's pulpit.

I read the New Testament two years ago and liked the Sermon on the Mount. Kurt Vonnegut has a great quote about that Sermon and Jesus, “If what Jesus said was good, and so much of it was beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not? If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.”

I went to Church every Sunday for a year, and by the end of my tenure, it was no longer the beautiful place it had been, but another comedy club full of other comedians. Everyone kept asking me if I wanted to be baptized, and I thought that joke had run its course. I was 35 at the time, and I’ll admit I was old enough to have known better. I think my last thought at a service was that I wouldn’t mind being led out in chains during the 7th inning stretch, naked with a case of shrinkage, and dunked into some holy water in a tub on the pitcher's mound, but again, I don’t have much say in these things. Life, for some, is a baseball season in July. You’re going to the play-offs, or you’re not. What they should do in the MLB is drop the bottom half. The losing teams. The White Sox. Their season should end on August 1st, and the ones who care, the ones who believe they have a chance, play. During recess, the kids who were up against the wall did not have a chance to play while we were playing. Still, the kids against the wall were placed there as a punishment for whatever social handicap they possessed, usually through inheritance. However, they don’t know that their fathers were also made to stand against the wall. In contrast, everyone else you knew enjoyed the one time during the school day when you got to play, and by playing I mean, chucking basketballs at developing bodies, and pretending you know what a dildo is while the adult, or gym teacher, stood there in sunglasses, thinking about Miller High-Life. They volunteer to do this.

I remember when Chicago Cubs fans attacked a baseball team, and the league implemented a 7th-inning cut-off for alcohol sales. This makes no sense to me. Why can’t fans attack athletes? They are going to get their asses kicked, even though baseball is the only professional sport where a player could eat two meals between innings and play a good game. It’s a sport full of recess volunteers, like the folks in the pews of a church, dreamers, thinking about Miller High-Life, something much larger than themselves. This is what I propose:

The Church should have a guy who sells beer and hot dogs. Baseball games should have communion. Everyone lines up and gets a piece of Sammy Sosa and a sip of Ron Santo’s, then you kneel before the statue of Ernie Banks, and are only allowed back into the stadium if you can recite the date Kerry Wood got 20 strike-outs. Baseball’s, amen. If you get tongue-tied, you can redeem yourself and sit in the nosebleeds by kissing the gum-stained sidewalk and saying, “Willie Mays.” I had to do it in Church, once. I should’ve known. It was scripture. I used to fill out a scorecard in Church. It’s very similar to the way you fill out a scorecard at a baseball game, except instead of the baseball diamond, it is a cross. So you start with The Father when someone goes up to read a passage. Based on their holiness, they might steal The Son because the Priest is bunting and going to hell, but the altar boys knock it out of the park. An usher is rounding around the Holy Spirit to Amen, but the interpretation of religion is caught and thrown to home plate, and all the ushers want to do is drink High-Life, and so they do.